Preaching liberation while sequestering into gated communities is endemic to tech. The “personal” computer was going to free us from the grip of IBM’s dominance in mainframes, but it fell under the even greater control of Microsoft. Apple claimed to be a revolutionary fighting Big Brother, but it erected the greatest tollbooth for creativity in history (the App Store). “Information wants to be free” was the rallying cry of earlier web company managements trying to convince fawning, idiotic content companies to exchange their content for pennies on the dollar.

The wheel turns once again, and the loudest barker at the carnival is venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, which has raised a $2.2 billion crypto fund and is deploying its general partners across the internet as missionaries. One partner preaches decentralization to his nearly 800,000 Twitter followers, and Marc Andreesen (the founder) blocks people who speak ill of web3 (including Jack) — he makes cool memes about it. BTW, I don’t think there’s anything wrong w/blocking people … it’s your feed.

As @Jack would say: “Words.” Andreesen Horowitz is putting its actual dollars into companies that build centralized, toll-taking platforms (OpenSea and Coinbase are both Andreesen Horowitz portfolio companies) with the middlemen needed to fix all the user-experience issues and trust issues that come with a decentralized system. Meet the new boss … he’s your old boss.